Phillip was born in Cumbria in 1980, spending the first 18 years of his life in the Lake District. He studied composition in Durham and Manchester Universities and for a PhD with Anthony Powers at Cardiff University.

Recent works have been performed by many of the country’s leading choirs, including the BBC Singers and The Sixteen. He has won several international competitions, and his work has regularly been premiered and broadcast on national radio in the UK and on many international broadcasters. His work is widely recorded and there are currently over twenty commercial recordings available featuring his music.

He is strongly influenced by his native Lake District and by the history, culture and people of the region. His main musical influences are found in continuing and reconciling a pastoral British tradition, seeking to work within this tradition in much of his output. As well as a composer, he is active as a writer on music having written articles and chapters on composers such as James MacMillan, Edward Elgar, Herbert Howells and Francis Pott. He co-edited a book of essays on Howells which was published by Boydell and Brewer in October 2013 and wrote the first major study on MacMillan’s music (The Music of James MacMillan) that was published by the same publishers in June 2019. He is married with two children, lives in Aberdeenshire and supports Everton (for his sins…).

From 2007-08 he was a Career Development Fellow at the Faculty of Music, Oxford University and a Junior Research Fellow (2007-10) at The Queen’s College, Oxford University. He was composition tutor at Eton College from 2011-12. In January 2013, he was appointed a Lecturer in Composition at the University of Aberdeen, becoming Deputy Head in 2015, Senior Lecturer in 2017 and was Head of Music from 2018-21. He became Professor of Composition in July 2022.